Forgetting and Remembering the 1918 Influenza Pandemic with Guy Beiner
Episode 40 - December 17, 2020
Guy Beiner (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) talks to Merle and Lee about his work on the memory and forgetting of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Guy first provides background about the impact of the Influenza Pandemic and offers an introduction to memory studies and social forgetting while pointing to problems with concepts such as collective memory. During the discussion Guy examines how historical events are remembered, then surveys the different ways academics and the public have discussed the 1918 Influenza in the past century. He highlights key moments that increased attention to the topic, such as the publication of Alfred Crosby’s book on the topic or the 1968 “Hong Kong Flu”. Finally, Guy reflects upon the most recent wave of attention to the 1918 pandemic during the present-day Covid pandemic.
Further Reading
- Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 311-28 (‘Afterword: An Inquiry into the Peculiarities of Human Memory’).
- Howard Phillips, ‘The Recent Wave of ‘Spanish’ Flu Historiography’, Social History of Medicine, 27, no. 4 (November, 2014), pp. 789-808.
- Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (New York: Public Affairs, 2017), pp. 287-95 (‘Afterword: On Memory’).
- Pandemic Amnesia (Decades TV, 2020).
- To be published in 2021: Guy Beiner (ed.), Pandemic Re-Awakenings: The Forgotten and Unforgotten Flu of 1918-1919 (Oxford University Press, forthcoming: 2021).
Our Guest
Guy Beiner,
Professor of History Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
